Last week, as we marked International Women’s Day, how could we not reflect on the regression that has unfolded before our eyes since the departure of US forces from Afghanistan in September? The action of the allies, including Canada, can be blamed what you want, but our presence will have at least given the Afghan women two decades of freedom. Since then, the Islamist lead forbids them to go out alone, to run businesses, to walk with their hair in the wind. In the neighboring Islamic Republic of Iran, the past year has been one of bravado. Regularly, social networks show us Iranian women removing their veil at the risk of being arrested by the guards of the local obscurantist prudishness. On the networks, the hashtags #ForcedHijab, whistleblower, and #FreeFromHijab, liberator, have gained momentum.
What would these women have thought when they saw the official advertisement released last week by the Canadian Ministry of Women and Gender Equality? We see five women accompanied by the slogan “Feminine inspiration”, one of whom wears the Islamic veil. Note: not just any veil. Not the one, colored, worn by activists and from which come out rebellious locks which attest, precisely, to a touch of impertinence. No. The stricter veil, with the headband that ensures that not a hair sticks out. The one preferred by rigorous imams.
In short, the Canadian ministry specializing in women’s rights, on the day when we celebrate planetary women’s struggles, affirms that a woman veiled in the cube represents “Feminine inspiration”. Invited by The duty commenting on this ad, professor and feminist activist Nadia El-Mabrouk, of Tunisian origin, angrily launches: “At a time when Afghan women are seeing all their rights withdrawn and are condemned to circulate under a black veil, this propaganda pro-voile is indecent. »
A Canadian who embodies feminine inspiration is Yasmine Mohammed. Forced to wear the hijab at age 9, then forced into marriage at age 20, she now had to wear the niqab. She left her husband when he wanted to inflict genital mutilation on their daughter. This took place not in Baghdad, but in Vancouver. She now hosts the Free Hearts, Free Minds site, which helps women who are trying to leave a forced Islamic practice, in the world and in the country. “Leaving Islam, she writes, is punishable by death in 12 Muslim countries. In addition to state repression, apostatized people in the Muslim world risk social isolation, violence, imprisonment, torture, denial and murder. » Mohammed, author of the book Unveiled. How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islamwhich describes her own experience, promotes Forgotten Feminists, women of various origins, but especially Muslims, who have freed themselves from religious patriarchy and who bear witness to their journey.
The constrained veil
In March 2021, a Montrealer was convicted of beating his four daughters, who refused to wear the veil. He threatened to kill them if they did not obey. An echo of the assassination of three young Montrealers (and their aunt) in 2009 by their parents of Afghan origin, the Shafia, dissatisfied with the behavior of their daughters. In the continuum that goes from these extreme cases, certainly, but local and contemporary, to perfectly free and autonomous women who choose to proudly wear the veil without the slightest constraint, there is a whole space that is difficult to gauge.
The Dr Sherif Emil, director of pediatric surgery at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, opened a small window on this reality in December. He was taken to task for having protested in a professional newspaper against the use by this one of a photo showing a child wearing a hijab. “Do not use an instrument of oppression as a symbol of diversity”, he wrote, before suffering a shower of insults and threats.
Contrite, he then explained that he wanted to relay the experience of a doctor colleague who was forced to wear the hijab from childhood and who described to him “how this caused psychological suffering in her which lasted until the end of her life. ‘adulthood “. Since the beginning of this controversy, the Dr Emil reportedly received countless testimonials from women telling him their stories. All of these Canadian women, he writes, “cannot speak out publicly because they fear personal or professional reprisals.” This simple fact, he adds, “should trouble many.”
Since this dynamic of the forced veil exists in Quebec and in Canada, what should we think of the propensity of government and businesses — and last month, of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities — to choose the image of the veiled woman as the symbol par excellence of the diversity ? This choice reinforces the Muslim patriarchal discourse by stereotyping the good Muslim as a veiled Muslim and by marginalizing the Muslim who wants to free herself from this religious instruction.
A discriminatory choice
It also discriminates against other religious faiths. The third of Canadians who are non-believers can recognize themselves among the other people represented, the veiled woman being rarely alone. But two-thirds of Canadians claiming a religious attachment must note that the only religion on display is not that of Jesus, Yahweh or the supreme Sikh guru, but that of Allah. What did he do to obtain this precedence?
Believing listeners to the CBC’s all-news channel are experiencing the same problem. At prime time, a veiled journalist explains their daily life to them. They will look in vain for a presenter displaying the majority religion, Christian, or other faiths. There is obviously a remedy for this equity problem: neutrality. A concept that seems to be in sharp decline in English Canada.
How to conclude? I asked Yasmine Mohammed for her reaction to the March 8 Canadian anti-feminist ad. Here is his response: “I am so tired, Jean-François. For me, it’s so personal. I do not know what to say. It breaks my heart. »
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